France, Germany, and the United Kingdom would like to thank DG Grossi for his latest report contained in GOV/2021/28 and DDG Aparo for the Technical Briefing.

As E3 we remain fully committed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) which, when implemented in full, is in the collective security interests of us all.

We fully support and are committed to the ongoing negotiations undertaken by all JCPoA participants and the United States in Vienna focussed on facilitating a return of the US to the deal, bringing Iran back into full compliance with its commitments and restoring the benefits of the JCPoA for all.

We remain deeply concerned at Iran’s continued violations of its nuclear-related commitments, including the escalatory steps taken since January 2021. Collectively, these steps present a significant nuclear proliferation risk, have irreversible consequences for Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and undermine the non-proliferation benefits of the JCPoA. It is particularly regrettable that some of these steps have come at a time when all JCPoA participants and the United States are engaged in substantive discussions, with the objective of finding a diplomatic solution to restore the JCPoA.

Iran continues to install technical infrastructure for the production of uranium metal and to produce uranium metal at laboratory scale. In addition, it is enriching uranium up to 60% to produce high enriched uranium for the first time. Iran has thus become the first and only country world-wide to produce 60% uranium in an IAEAsafeguarded facility. These are critical steps for nuclear weapons production and provide irreversible nuclear weapons-related knowledge gains.

Iran also continues to build up its low enriched uranium stockpile and to expand its enrichment capacity.

We urge Iran to stop, and to reverse any action contrary to the JCPoA, to seize the diplomatic opportunity of the Vienna talks, and to return to full compliance with its JCPoA commitments.

In this context, we are deeply concerned by the continued limits placed on the IAEA’s monitoring and surveillance activities in Iran. The temporary technical understanding between the IAEA and Iran in place until 24 June does not diminish the core need for Iran to restore all accesses by resuming its provisional application of the Additional Protocol and reinstating all JCPoA-related transparency provisions in full.

Iran must co-operate fully with the IAEA and grant unimpeded access to all relevant sites and activities to ensure the Agency can continue to fulfil its reporting mandate under UNSCR 2231 regarding Iran’s nuclear-related JCPoA commitments.

In limiting IAEA access, Iran makes it harder for the international community to assure themselves that Iran’s activities remain exclusively peaceful. We know that our very serious concerns at Iran’s actions are widely shared among members of this Board.

The E3 are working intensively with JCPoA participants, and the US, towards the restoration and revitalisation of the JCPoA. We encourage Iran to seize the diplomatic opportunity towards a return to full compliance with its JCPoA commitments to restore the benefits of the JCPoA for all. It is right that this Board keeps the very serious and significant issues addressed today under active review.

We encourage the DG to keep the Board informed regarding progress on monitoring and verification in Iran in all its aspects.

We would welcome that the Agency’s latest quarterly report on monitoring and verification in Iran be made public.

Thank you.

Launched in 2019, it is delivered by Mission Motorsport, the Forces’ Motorsport Charity in partnership with the Royal Foundation and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), with the support of the Ministry of Defence.

Since its launch, the Mission Automotive initiative has paved the way for forces friendly engagement within the automotive industry. Fostering mutually beneficial relationships between industry leaders and Defence, collaboration is the life blood of the initiative. The partner structure including SMMT, MOD and the Royal Foundation is vital to the Mission Automotive objectives:

• to help companies to harness the expertise and support of their industry body

• to tap into support from peer organisations

• to source and retain mission critical skills and extraordinary people in second careers after they have left the armed forces

Advocacy from the industry’s leading body

The recent Armed Forces Covenant (AFC) signing by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders highlights the positive impact that veterans and service leavers bring to the industry. The pledge demonstrates SMMT’s commitment to promoting best practice, fostering a culture and ethos of inclusivity, and making the commercial case for automotive companies to also sign up to the Covenant, making informed pledges that reflect their company values.

James Cameron, Mission Motorsport CEO, said:

“The Armed Forces Covenant is a promise – a commitment – to ensure that those who have served in the Armed Forces, and their families, should not be disadvantaged by their service to the country. Service leavers and veterans are a national resource, and SMMT has been innovative in helping its members to share best practices, to support each other, and harness that human potential. By helping to make the commercial case for companies, SMMT’s engagement and advocacy through its Mission Automotive initiative is encouraging not only members, but other industry bodies to follow suit and this should be celebrated.”

Mission Automotive is committed to facilitating pathways into employment. Through collaboration with Defence Relationship Management and the Career Transition Partnership (the MODs official provider of Armed Forces Resettlement), Mission Automotive works with employers to foster new behaviours to attract and retain service leaver talent, as well as access to the UK’s highly skilled veteran community and their families, who are at times overlooked.

Following 5 years of service as an Aircraftsman in the Royal Air Force, Jo Parker left the armed forces. Having worked in a variety of roles, Jo found it difficult to settle and lacked job satisfaction. Signposted to Mission Motorsport, Jo was introduced to the Mission Automotive initiative and enrolled in Toyota GB’s first Armed Forces Engagement Programme, developed with the help of Mission Automotive and Jaguar Land Rover. He completed his Toyota Level 2 Technician’s course held at the Toyota Academy in Burnstanton, Derbyshire securing fulltime employment with a dealership in his home town of Birmingham.

Speaking about the initiative Jo said: “Being able to be part of the Mission Automotive initiative has changed my life. I am now in secure full-time employment with an employer who recognises the talent that ex-service personnel can bring to a team”.

Able to combine his passion for cars and setting out on a new, successful career pathway, within four months of starting his new role, Jo was promoted to Workshop Foreman where he now manages the dealership’s workshop, a small team of technicians and reports directly to senior management.

Industry leaders setting the gold standard

Through Mission Automotive’s advocacy of the AFC and MOD Employer Recognition Scheme, the initiative has supported a growth in industry leaders who are mentoring other organisations on the benefits of signing the Armed Forces Covenant and partnering with Defence. Jaguar Land Rover signed the Armed Forces Covenant in April 2014 and established an active Armed Forces Engagement Programme resulting in an Employer Recognition Scheme Gold Award in 2015. Since October 2014 they have employed over 1,000 veterans and service leavers globally, including over 40 wounded, injured and sick and over 50 into the UK retailer network. JLR are proud to have been the Presenting Partner for Invictus Games since the inaugural games in London in 2014.

In November 2019, Jaguar Land Rover formerly launched their Armed Forces Community Network, bringing together veterans, reservists, military spouses and partners, Cadet Force Adult Volunteers and military parents employed by the company within the UK. During the Covid-19 pandemic, JLR supported 5 reservist employees mobilised as part of Op RESCRIPT, the MOD’s support to the fight against Covid-19 in the UK. In July 2020, the company successfully revalidated their ERS Gold Award and in February 2021 the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Thierry Bolloré and Executive Director, HR Dave Williams re-signed the Armed Forces Covenant, reaffirming JLR’s commitment with updated pledges.

Jaguar Land Rover continues to play a leading role within the UK in advocacy for the Armed Forces Covenant as a founding member of the Mission Automotive Initiative and active member of the ERS Gold Award Association at both regional and national levels.

Success pathways

In two years and in spite of a global pandemic, the Mission Automotive initiative has grown and diversified. By listening to the needs of businesses, in the first two years the initiative has worked alongside more than 80 companies of all sizes helping them to recognise the benefits that Service Leavers, Veterans and their families can bring to their business. By fostering positive new behaviours, and helping employers to navigate culture, ethos, brand and HR areas; companies have found new talent, orchestrating Armed Forces Covenant signings and supporting those advancing on the Employment Recognition Scheme, the Mission Automotive initiative is helping the industry to create new supported pathways to employment, and making Automotive an industry of choice for service leavers, veterans and family members.

Next steps

For the UK automotive industry, now is the time to access service-leaver talent. As the UK automotive industry looks to the future, it’s more important than ever for companies within the sector to recognise the transferable skill set of ex-military personnel.

Find out more about the Mission Automotive initiative today.

Become a Forces-Friendly organisation

Take the first steps to becoming a Forces-Friendly organisation by signing the Armed Forces Covenant today.

Support and guidance: Start your journey on the MOD Employer Recognition Scheme.

Defence Relationship Management supports employers to recruit and retain members of the Armed Forces community so that businesses can access the transferable skills that Armed Forces personnel bring to the workplace. Our relationship management team are on hand to offer guidance and support as you begin your journey on the MOD Employer Recognition Scheme.

Become a CTP preferred supplier and join the thousands of other employers who already benefit from access to the growing ex-military talent pool.

Welcome to my second blog.

My first eight weeks as National Data Guardian (NDG) have been my ‘honeymoon period’ and what I somewhat grandly titled my ‘listening exercise’. I’ve been meeting many people and organisations for the first time in role and getting to know the excellent Office of the National Data Guardian team. I’ve been excited and inspired, taken aback (sometimes at the same time) and curious hearing the range of sometimes very polarised views on data sharing, use, and risk / benefit balance. Many thanks to those I’ve met for their time.

I’ve also found it striking the degree to which questions of data use appear often to be approached through the prism of broader questions such as those relating to individual and / or professional identity, or trust in institutions. Arguably distinct issues sometimes quickly become conflated, perhaps reflecting more fundamental tensions over our underlying shared values as citizens.

As the honeymoon ends, as all must, I’ve perceived that there’s expectation in some quarters for the NDG to be able to exercise some form of omnipotent authority over health and care data. In situations of conflict, my own style of leadership aspires to be more honest-broker than a ‘Boudica’ brandishing a sword. More importantly, it is not the NDG role. In several conversations I’ve invoked the framework of the legislation that established the role to maintain the NDG is not a regulator that enforces, but rather an individual vested with the authority to produce guidance that organisations must have regard to – and to give advice and information about, and assistance in relation to, the processing of health and adult social care data in England. The Act is silent on to what extent that advice should be public.

As you’d expect, I’ve also experienced an implied (or sometimes explicit) comparison with my predecessor as NDG, the late Dame Fiona Caldicott. I too find myself asking “what would Dame Fiona have done?”, and I find that a helpful question. I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet with her over the last year in the run-up to my appointment and to benefit from some full and frank advice about approaching the challenges of the role. The NDG team and panel members have since been incredibly supportive in discussing the background to current issues, including the more ‘ancient’ history that shapes our current data landscape.

All of which for me has brought the question of my own values sharply into focus. What will matter most in this role? Turning to the principles and values of the NHS Constitution is a good starting point, alongside the Seven Principles of Public Life. My experience thus far has led me to distil a further two personal values that feel particularly important now, namely to:

1. Work with complexity and resist binary thinking – oversimplification of complex issues or polarisation of organisations or individuals into ‘good or bad’, whether for ideological or other purposes, is rarely helpful. I stand with Oscar Wilde here – ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple’.

2. Work with humility – recognising no expert is infallible, no solution or system is ever perfect. Health and care must be a learning system that seeks to continuously improve from both positive and negative experience. When things go wrong and / or mistakes are made, scapegoating and attributing incompetence or malign intent is usually unhelpful and inaccurate. What matters is how we learn together from what’s happened and what we do about it now, and that is my focus.

No doubt, as my experience as NDG evolves, I’ll develop and refine those further. I suspect I’ll also be adding in something related to healthcare being an emotional business.

As you may guess, the most pressing issue landing on my desk in these first few weeks has been the question of public trust, and my role in that, in relation to the General Practice Data for Planning and Research programme (GPDPR). The Office of the NDG has been actively involved in discussion of the initiative since 2018, alongside stakeholders including the Royal College of GPs and the British Medical Association. One of the key points of discussion has been the imperative to build on learning from previous data initiatives, including care.data and the National Data Opt-out, not least ensuring the right safeguards are in place and that this is clearly communicated to the public.

From what I have seen since coming into post, learning from experience has resulted in the development of a programme which represents a step forward in terms of privacy safeguards, with data releases subject to a strong system of independent oversight. However, since its launch the benefits of the new GPDPR system have not come through in much of the media discourse. It appears that, in the absence of an alternative, a narrative has developed that this new initiative is essentially historically blind and a ‘data grab’ for possibly nefarious purposes. Such accounts often make no reference to the multiple different data collections from primary care that already exist, their range of purposes, or the aging technical system that GPDPR replaces. Concerns about commercial companies accessing data have also clearly been very significant for many people.

Communicating about this data collection clearly was also going to be of paramount importance – as important as making sure the technical details, security arrangements and safeguards were well designed. The importance of building a clear communications campaign so that the public could see what would and would not be done with data has been at the heart of the advice given by the NDG office and panel to this programme over the past years. This advice was in keeping with the new Caldicott Principle 8 that there should be ‘no surprises’ for patients and the public in terms of how health and care data is used. I have been intensely involved in discussions over this last week about the need to allow more time for communications. I’m very pleased by the decision to delay the launch for these questions to be addressed.

It’s essential we all now work together as a system, with humility and honesty, to actively engage with public concerns to ensure there are ‘no surprises’, and I look forward to playing my role in that. One of the ways we achieve this is by providing citizens with the information they need, presented in a way that is sufficiently clear. This will allow them to make their own informed view on the purpose and trustworthiness of the system and its processes, including security, privacy protection and how decisions are made, with clear information about opting out, and what that means in practice if they do.

We all ultimately approach questions of health and care data as individuals, both in what we choose to share with health and care professionals, and then how we exercise our rights regarding how that information is used. Our individual approaches depend on a range of factors, including on how we balance risks and benefits in the light of our personal experience, priorities and wider concerns.

Personally, I have chosen not to opt out. I’ve shared that private information mindful that Dame Fiona Caldicott decided to take the step of publicly disclosing the same. I am satisfied with the purpose, safeguards and oversight of the GPDPR. And I am concerned that if large numbers of people do opt out because our systems are not shown to be trustworthy, then that will result in poorer quality, unrepresentative data sets for health research and system planning, which ultimately will be seriously to the detriment of improving health and care for us all.

Now as my listening exercise of the past two months concludes, I will be laying out my priorities for the coming year in more detail in the NDG annual report, to be published this summer. In the meantime, I welcome your feedback and thoughts via ndgoffice@nhs.net.

Last year the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) awarded a contract worth £80-million to Kier Graham Defence Ltd to deliver the works, which are expected to be completed in early 2023.

The Submarine Training Facility (SMTF) building will house the Royal Navy’s new submarine school for all submarine specific training including training for submariners on the new Dreadnought Class submarines, which will maintain the UK’s Continuous At Sea Deterrent. Designed and built in the UK, these submarines will employ world-leading and cutting-edge technology.

The training currently based at the Royal Naval Submarine School (RNSMS) at HMS Raleigh and elements of the training from the Defence School of Marine Engineering (DSMarE), and the Nuclear Systems Group and Nuclear Faculty at HMS Sultan will also transfer to the new facility.

During May, the new building started to take shape as steel frames were put into place, marking a significant construction milestone in the project.

The new SMTF facility will be located adjacent to, but separate from, the recently completed submarine escape, rescue, abandonment and survival (SMERAS) facility on the base.

The works are part of a wider Defence plan to create a Submarine Centre of Specialisation located at HMNB Clyde, which is already home to the core of the Submarine Service, including the nuclear deterrent and new generation of hunter-killer submarine. DIO is investing a total £1.6-billion in facilities at HMNB Clyde.

Steven O’Connor, DIO Project Manager, said:

DIO is proud to be leading on the development of this essential facility at HMNB Clyde and to support the development of the centre of specialisation.

This will ensure that Royal Navy personnel can train in a state-of-the-art environment for many years to come.

Captain Iain Breckenridge, Captain of submarine training with the Royal Navy’s Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) organisation at HM Naval Base Clyde, said:

These are exciting times for all Submariners. With training delivery being reshaped to provide modern and highly realistic training in classrooms, simulators, by virtual and synthetic means, as well as online, it means Submariners no longer have to travel to different locations to train. Everything will be delivered at HM Naval Base Clyde helping to improve their career and domestic balance.

The Submarine Training Facility project is the final piece in the creation of a Submarine Centre of Specialisation at HM Naval Base Clyde. All future training, from the Submarine Qualifying Course to the world-renowned ‘Perisher’ Command Course, will now be based on the Clyde along with the Royal Navy’s entire fleet of submarines.

The creation of the Submarine Escape, Recovery and Survivability (SMERAS) has already placed the Submarine Service at the leading-edge of escape training and the creation of the Submarine Training Facility will place us at the forefront of all submarine training.

As part of the UK, Scotland benefits from billions of pounds of Defence contracts placed directly and indirectly with hundreds of companies, which sustain thousands of jobs.

The UK government is firmly committed to Scotland’s continued vital role in Defence, and the major investment in the future of HMNB Clyde is a testament to this.